Microsoft announces road map to enhance BI platform with introduction of SQL Server Reporting Services

Microsoft South Africa today announced plans to extend its SQL Server business intelligence (BI) platform to include reporting capabilities. Microsoft expects to release a beta test version of the software in the first half of this year. Microsoft`s intent to deliver enterprise reporting functionality demonstrates its commitment to bringing improved business insight to every employee, at every level.

"One of Microsoft`s goals is to empower employees with the information needed to make better business decisions every day," said David Ives, business productivity advisor at Microsoft South Africa. "With the combination of SQL Server Analysis Services and Reporting Services, developers will be able to extend applications to provide rich embedded reporting and analysis solutions that are both cost-effective and easy to use. This will also extend the BI functionality already available in Microsoft Office solutions today."

Microsoft`s plan is to provide an open and extensible reporting platform that industry partners can use to broaden their offerings without having to invest in building reporting infrastructure. Reporting Services will support a Web services interface to allow developers to easily build custom applications, and it will support a wide range of data sources including OLE DB and ODBC as well as multiple output formats including Web browsers and Microsoft Office applications. Using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework, developers will be able to extend the capabilities of the platform, enabling it to connect to custom data sources, produce additional output formats and deliver to more devices.

With this addition, SQL Server will provide the single-most comprehensive BI platform on the market with integrated analytics including OLAP, data mining, ETL, data warehousing and reporting functionality, helping enterprises realise the value of better decision-making while lowering total cost of ownership.

"We are very excited by this new offering, this will greatly enhance our ability to deliver fully integrated enterprise business intelligent solutions from a single platform. This new solution will allow us to extend the best in class analytics provided by ProClarity to the whole enterprise at a fraction of the cost of competitive offerings" says Keith Jones, managing director of Harvey Jones Systems, ProClarity distributor in SA. "I am confident the price sensitive South African market will become one of the leading adopters of this technology, our strong partner channel will ensure the relevant skills are available to the customers."

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is the complete database and analysis offering for rapidly delivering the next generation of scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and data warehousing solutions. It dramatically reduces the time required to bring these applications to market while offering the scalability needed for the most-demanding environments. More information on Microsoft SQL Server can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/.